Cheer up!!!

For all those who commented on my last post, many thanks.  It was a great discussion that is worthy of continuation.

The reactions to Tara's article and some of the columns it has spawned has been varied and often negative.  Two particular types of reactions touched me because I can totally relate to them.

Reaction #1:  If it's really hard to keep the weight off for a host of reasons, am I doomed to ultimately fail?

I think about this a lot as it relates to my own weight.  I do this even though people I know think I'm a bit of an unmitigated freak given that I've been at goal weight for nearly three years.  They wonder (usually aloud and within a foot of my face) what exactly I'm worried about?  "You look great.  In fact, you should go eat a sandwich."

As I have said on so many other posts, I more or less always feel that I'm a week of bad food away from spiraling into a horrific abyss of crushing weight gain.  I feel that as soon as I let go, everything will slip away.  I always feel like I'm living on borrowed time and that it's only a matter of time before I fully revert to a stuffed pizza & breakfast burrito fueled weight escalation.  I'm doomed!  And I never learned to read!

These kinds of personal histrionics are frankly exhausting.  

Logically, there are reasons that I harbor these seemingly crazy fears.  I know that I suffer from food lust.  I know that I would be perfectly happy to eat three to four pounds of cashews every day.  I know this because I sometimes find myself being a little out of control, and I know what that feels like.  I know what's it's like to be in the mental grip when everything in my peripheral vision disappears, and all I can see is the food that I am shoving into my mouth as fast as it will go.  It goes without saying that every time I do get out of control, I beat the living crap out of myself.

Yet in more lucid moments, I try to ask myself the question:  what exactly is the big deal?  When I spend a day living healthily, I feel great and I'm not even hungry.  I remind myself that I really do like the better-for-me foods that I now eat.  I remind myself that fried food generally gives me a bad case of indigestion, and I don't sleep well afterwards.  So there you have it:  the healthy life makes me feel great and leaves me fully satisfied while the I-need-an-exorcism unhealthy life makes me feel like dirt.  So why am I tempted by temptation?  I will leave this to religious scholars and philosophers to sort out, but it is comforting to know that it is, on some level, all in my head.

If it is in my head, I know that I need to be careful about who else I let muck around inside my skull.  If I keep telling myself, or let someone else tell me that I my healthier life is deprived and terrible, then living healthy will seem really hard and unsustainable.  If I listen to the truth and not the words that have passed through my personal distortion field, I can then take a deep couple of breaths and take comfort in my happy, healthier life.

I can also take comfort in knowing that because I operate on a level of heightened alert, I can very cued into knowing when I'm falling by the wayside.  Early intervention helps because it means I have less to recover from when I do stumble.  The worse thing I could do to myself is to live in denial when I am falling headlong and backwards into my old life.

By the way.  If you are achieving success in making a change in the path of your life, try not to lose sight of the bigger picture.  You completely rock the house!  Whatever angst I may sometimes feel about all of this maintaining my healthy life, I would not in 1,000 years give up the successes I've had to throw in the towel and quit.  It may be a challenge and sometimes even hard, but it has been completely and utterly worth the effort.  

Reaction #2:  if you are actively maintaining your weight loss you must have a bad relationship with food

Well, you can't win for losing (sorry about the pun).  There is always someone out there who is perfectly happy to judge someone else, and this topic is no exception.  Let me just be clear.  The people from the National Weight Control Registry who are being poked at are being criticized because they are vigilantly working to keep their weight off.  Let see...  They are actively making sure that they manage portion sizes.  They are keeping a food diary to try to avoid mindless eating.  They are making sure to exercise an hour each day (btw, this is the official recommendation of the US government on activity).  They are very careful about managing their interactions with junk food.  Damned them!!!!

We live in a world in which we are surrounded by lots of unhealthy food choices and temptations.  It's called an obesogenic environment for a reason.  Until someone can make it all go away, and I'm not holding my breath on this, we all have to find a way to manage while we still live in it.  If you lived in a neighborhood with rampant crime, you'd lock your doors and be careful not to wander around the park in the middle of the night.  You would not blithely walk around in an oblivious state on the assumption that the police will keep you safe no matter what.  How is protecting ourselves in an environment of junk food, fries and soda any different?

It may feel frustrating that it has to be this way, but for many of us, me included, living healthy requires effort and a certain amount of vigilance.  It requires managing our personal environment so that we do not have to constantly test ourselves in the face of temptation.  It requires establishing habits and routines that make us more aware and mindful of what we are doing.  Most of my food vices are the result of mindless habits and actions.  I know that I have to create triggers and stimuli to help me manage them.  This is why I take advantage of tools and support to help me handle these challenges.  Tracking is the biggest tool hanging from my healthy life utility belt, but I use many others as well.

If there is one mindset we should all endeavor to embrace in this very difficult topic it should be one of empathy, not judgement.  There is no room to judge those who suffer from obesity, and there is certainly no room to judge from those who try to do something about it.  Perhaps we should all focus on fixing ourselves and supporting each other in the process, not telling each other what to do or standing in judgement.

So here is my final proposal for consideration.  For all of us who are trying to hold onto our progress in making a healthier life for ourselves, let's take a few deep breaths and then give ourselves a well deserved pat on the back.  We may slip, trip, fall and stumble, but we can and will get right back up.  We can watch where we're walking so we don't trip as often (this happens to me a lot), and we should never feel badly about that (!).  BTW, if you are proud of what you have achieved, don't be shy.  You should be proud.  If you are feeling badly for have stumbled, don't sweat it.  It happens to the best of us and all of us.  Know that you are not alone and that there is no shortage of people who are willing and want to help.

Cheers,

David